Big occasions attract troublemakers<\/p>\n
Henry Samuel is The Telegraph\u2019s Paris correspondent and has lived in the French capital for almost three decades. Arguing there were \u201cmany people to blame\u201d for what culminated in the weekend\u2019s rioting, he said: \u201cIt\u2019s no secret that French policing tactics have been questioned not just by rights groups but by international rights groups. The handling of the Liverpool game, but not just football. The way they handled yellow-vests protests and the number of people who lost an eye or half their face because they had stunning ammo fired straight at them, is unbelievable, and it just wouldn\u2019t wash in any other country in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pointing out \u201cFrance has always had a history of revolting and having mass demonstrations\u201d, he added: \u201cThe French police have got a lot of issues. They\u2019re not very good at root-and-branch reform and really saying, \u2018How can we improve?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, on the other side, they\u2019ve got an incredibly tough job. They\u2019ve had to deal with a hell of a lot of stuff, whether it be riots over the last few years, terrorism, demonstrations, and then football matches. So, you can see it from their point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Samuel, PSG\u2019s recent successes have also tended to attract those who live in what are called banlieues \u2013 suburbs often populated by low-income households and immigrant communities \u2013 into city centres. \u201cI don\u2019t really know who the troublemakers were and what their profiles were,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether this has got to do with first or second-generation immigrants is hard to say. There\u2019s certainly, in France, big banlieues, in every single big city where there\u2019s a lot of deprived suburbs and a lot of unemployment. And when there\u2019s a big occasion, in particular, a big football match, they all do come to the centre. They all think it\u2019s great fun and big revelling. And then it can get out of hand. They can get overly feisty.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the most notable features of Arsenal\u2019s Premier League title celebrations was how it appeared to attract fans to north London from all walks of life, none of whom engaged in the kind of rioting and looting that plagued Paris. Indeed, there were only 24 arrests<\/a> during Sunday\u2019s bus parade attended by an estimated 750,000 people, albeit 10 were accused of assaulting police officers. For all that Mikel Arteta\u2019s men could learn from PSG on the field after their latest defeat by Luis Enrique\u2019s side, there appears plenty that those in France could learn from England off it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Big occasions attract troublemakers Henry Samuel is The Telegraph\u2019s Paris correspondent and has lived in the French capital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1669,218,59,13772,295,217,101,5438,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-616677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-champions-league","tag-football","tag-gb","tag-paris","tag-psg","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-standard","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}